Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For believing in this collection and bringing about its publication, I would like to thank Barney Karpfinger, my agent, and Janet Silver, publisher, of Houghton Mifflin. However, this volume would not have found its present form but for Meg Lemke, who edited and oversaw it, and even suggested the title. I owe her a great debt of gratitude.

My thanks are due also to the editors who first published these pieces: Leon Wiesletier at the New Republic, Katrina Vanden Heuvel at The Nation, N. Ram at the Hindu, Michael Neumann at Die Zeit, and most of all, Bill Buford, who as the editor of Granta and then as the fiction editor of The New Yorker was responsible for seeing many of these pieces into print.

My wife, Deborah Baker, assisted at the birth of many of these essays, and my gratitude to her, is, as always, beyond measure. I am grateful also to my children, Lila and Nayan, not least for providing me with the hours of wakefulness in which many of these pieces were written. Finally, I am glad to be afforded this opportunity to thank Barbara and Jeffrey Baker, not just for being the most welcoming of in-laws, but also for personifying the openness and generosity of America at its best.